Every two years the Old Media engages in its now-familiar mating ritual with the liberal electorate. Acting on cue, reporters and columnists dust off their tired clichés and recycle their flawed arithmetic to show how this year women will -- at long last -- determine the outcome of the presidential election.

Remember 1984? That was the year Hulk Hogan defeated Iron Sheik to become the WWF champ, and the "Milk and Honey" album by John and Yoko Lennon was released.

It was also the year that N.O.W. president Eleanor Smeal guaranteed the Democrats would enjoy a 10% boost if they selected a female presidential running mate. But come November, only 44% of female voters voted for the Mondale-Ferraro ticket, handing Ronald Reagan a historic landslide victory.

That embarrassment didn't stop the rad-fems from playing up the female gender gap, telling party elders to endorse abortion rights for teenage girls if they were going to have any hope of winning the election.

So did their hectoring turn the tide?

In 1976, 50% of the ladies opted for Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter. In 2004, John Kerry garnered 51% of the soccer-mom vote. Yep, a gain of one measly percentage point in 28 years.

Meanwhile, men were fleeing the Democratic party like a crew of well-drillers invited to a Nancy Pelosi fund-raiser. While 50% of men voted for Carter in 1976, only 44% of the guys selected Mr. Kerry in 2004. That translated into a 3.5 million vote gap favoring Mr. Bush.

In the seven elections from 1980 to 2004, the Democratic party has prevailed in only two contests. Writing in The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma, David Kuhn concludes, "No factor has been more instrumental in causing the Democratic decline in presidential politics than the loss of white men."

Before the Democratic primaries, all the smart money was betting on an easy win for Hillary Clinton. But once again history proved itself unfazed by the dictates of political correctness.

After the smoke had cleared, Barack Obama emerged triumphant. Out of the 17 primaries with exit polling, Mr. Obama took the white male vote in 10 states. Only in four states did he win thanks to a plurality of white female voters. As ABC analyst Gary Langer noted, "in states with significant but not vast numbers of black voters, and few Hispanics, white men are critical."

So let's take a look Sen. John McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The reaction of pundits on both the Right and the Left was Palin would shore up female support for the Republican ticket.

And sure enough, the McCain/Palin ticket is now tied with Obama and Biden. Is that due to a surge of support from the female electorate for the GOP candidates? Well, not exactly.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, men are more enthusiastic about the Palin candidacy than women – 62% of men have a favorable opinion of the Alaska governor, compared to only 53% of women. Fifty-seven percent of male respondents believe Palin is qualified to be vice president, compared to only 43% of females.

These sentiments translate into you-can-take-it-to-the-bank votes.

Following McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, white men gave McCain a muscular 25-point advantage over Obama. In comparison, white women favored the GOP ticket by only 11 points.

More amazing is how those progressive, tolerant women are falling all over themselves to trash the vice-presidential candidate. During her acceptance speech in Minneapolis, protesters stood up wearing dresses that declared, "Palin Not a Woman!"

Uber-feminist Gloria Steinem castigated Palin as a pawn of the "right wing patriarchs." Newsweek's Sally Quinn deplored her "weak resumé and right-wing ideology." Eve Ensler, playwright of the raunchy Vagina Monologues, described the choice as "insidious and cynical." Eleanor Clift claimed the selection triggered laughter in "many, many newsrooms." And Maureen Dowd called Palin the "Vice in Go-Go Boots."

As you can see, it's not the patriarchy that's holding women down. Rather, it's the self-adoring, male-detesting leftist women who can't stand the thought of a gun-toting, abortion-rejecting Hockey Mom coming to town.

And as far as white men, the second largest electoral bloc in the nation, don't count them out. When all is said and done, they may again tip the outcome of this Fall's presidential race.

Carey Roberts is a Staff Writer for The New Media Alliance. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.